In
1968, Thomas joined
the US Army and was
sent to Pleiku, South
Vietnam as a combat
engineer and artist.
For one year he drafted
blueprints, drove a
Jeep, and drew pictures
of Vietnamese children.

By
lucky happenstance,
Thomas also drew a picture
of a fellow soldier’s
girlfriend. In lieu
of payment for the drawing,
he asked his friend,
who worked in personnel,
to change his records
and shorten his stint
in Vietnam from twelve
to eleven months. The
friend complied. In
so doing, Thomas was
able to return to the
United States weeks
early. The helicopter
on which he routinely
rode was shot down during
the twelfth month. Nobody
survived. There was
a 50/50 chance Thomas
would have been on that
plane, he recalls.

Thomas’s
involvement in the war
made him a pacifist.
And that ideology continues
to shape the majority
of his subsequent work.
Upon his arrival home,
to soothe his battered
spirit and make sense
of his recent experience,
he worked for two solid
weeks creating a series
of pencil drawings and
acrylic paintings of
Vietnamese subjects.

That
action, he says, became
his salvation from post-traumatic
stress disorder. In
1987, he donated those
compositions to the
Museum of Fine Arts
in Hanoi when he revisited
Vietnam for the first
time since the 1960s.

The
following year he founded
the Indochina Arts Partnership
(IAP). The IAP is a
nonprofit organization
whose goal is to promote
reconciliation between
the United States and
the countries of Indochina
through cultural and
educational exchanges.
He has since returned
to the region nearly
75 times in various
capacities.

Ho
Chi Minh, mixed
media, 30 x
22 inches

For
the past four decades
Thomas, who holds an
MFA from the Rhode Island
School of Design (RISD),
has been plying his
craft as an artist,
educator, and humanist.
For 25 years he was
a Professor of Studio
Art at Emmanuel College
in Boston and in1997
he received the school’s
Faculty Excellence Award.
From 2001 to 2008, Thomas
taught at Massachusetts
College of Art.

Four
years ago he and his
wife, Jean, sold their
Newton home and moved
to a 300-year-old carriage
house in Wellesley which
they redesigned. They
added a garage and built
Thomas’s
new studio above it.
The studio is situated
close to the main portion
of the house, up a flight
of stairs, yet far enough
away to provide the
sanctuary a prolific
artist requires.

The
charming 600 square-foot
space is filled with
dozens of Vietnamese
treasures: colorful
kites, a whimsical butterfly,
and vivid yellow dragons,
each 100 feet long and
made of silk and bamboo,
which sway gently from
the ceiling like Alexander
Calder mobiles. There
are straw baskets of
varying shapes and sizes
and scores of books
line the wall. The 40-year-old
printing press Thomas
uses dominates the far
end of the room. Light
streams in from a large
northern-exposure window
next to his computer,
beyond which lie the
protected wetlands that
make up the backyard.
Deer often wander by.

Photograph
of Thomas taken
on Engineer
Hill, Pleiku,
South Vietnam
in 1969

Scattered
about the studio are
photographs of Thomas
at various stages of
his professional life.
A five-by-seven inch
photo of his new granddaughter
sits in full view on
his work table. There’s
also a set of Vietnamese
brushes nearby, made
of bamboo, water buffalo
horn, feathers, and
porcelain, which Thomas
says are just too beautiful
to use.

Visual
remembrances of Vietnam
that Thomas has constructed
are on display everywhere:
sensitive portraits,
striking lithographs,
and haunting photo-collages.
His life’s
work is all about antiwar
motifs and nonviolence,
he says. “I
think of what I do as
trying to improve the
human condition in some
way…Vietnam
is the rope that runs
through my work. Within
the context of that
rope, the threads are
Ho Chi Minh, the insanity
and randomness of war,
the Vietnamese people,
and the Vietnamese culture,” he
explains.

Thomas’s
diverse collection of
work is a dazzling array
of creativity, and a
testament to his passion,
focus, and accomplishment.
He defines that work
as a cross between fine
art that is realistic,
not abstract but figurative,
and graphic design.

Playing
Soldier, 2009,
digital print
with pastel,
32 x 22 inches

Although
he loves drawing and
printmaking, since 2002
Thomas’s
primary medium has been
the “electronic
canvas.” “Creating
digital imagery offers
constant surprise,” he
says. He digitally manipulates
his photographs and
renderings before applying
charcoal and pastels.
Rather than allowing
the technology to dictate
his aesthetic, Thomas
says he finds the computer
a stimulating tool that
enables him to make
easily readable statements
he needs to make now.

To
date, his art has been
an integral part of
more than 25 one-person
shows and hundreds of
group exhibitions throughout
the United States and
abroad. He has been
the recipient of numerous
accolades and awards.
Many of Thomas’s
creations are marketed
to museums and university
galleries, rather than
on Newbury Street or
the South End. And,
he says, he has had
great success with juried
exhibitions.

In
an attempt to keep his
vision fresh and process
vital, Thomas tries
not to repeat himself
stylistically, or become
a slave to commercialization.
But it’s
his continuous trips
to Vietnam, several
times each year, to
do research and conduct
cultural exchange programs,
that really “keep
his creative juices
flowing,” he
says. Thomas is clearly
enamored of the Vietnamese
culture and people whom
he refers to as, “gentle,
generous, kind, and
incredibly wonderful.”

From
2002 to 2004, Thomas
was the recipient of
a Fulbright Scholar
Grant to Vietnam. During
that time, he and his
wife lived in Hanoi.
As part of his work,
he redesigned all the
marketing materials
for the National Fine
Arts Museum, reconfigured
Cultural
Window Magazine
for the World Publishing
House, and wrote monthly
art reviews.

Thomas
maintains his most significant
creative work is his
artist’s
book on Ho Chi Minh,
a collaborative effort
with Charles Fenn, a
British writer. The
fictional diary, 116
pages of images and
text, printed only in
English, is in almost
every rare book and
artist’s
book collection in the
United States. A mere
100 copies were printed
of this exquisite work
that took five years
to complete (from 1995
to 2000) and cost more
than $50,000 to produce.
That endeavor is one
of the defining accomplishments
of his career, he says.

He
also takes great pride
in the Vietnam Art Medal
he won in 2000. Thomas
was the first foreigner
to receive this highest
art honor given by the
Vietnamese government.
In 2003, Thomas’s
son and daughter accepted
the RISD Alumni Award
for Leadership and Service,
on behalf of their father
who was in Hanoi at
the time.

Thomas’s
latest work is autobiographical
and a metaphor for his
life, he says. The series
of 25 digitally-created “puzzlepeaces” contains
iconic religious imagery
(Christ, the Buddha),
combined with horrific
war imagery (the My
Lai Massacre, Kim Phuc),
juxtaposed against snippets
of family photographs
(his father at age 22,
himself in military
garb). This powerful
antiwar statement will
be on exhibit at Northeastern
University this fall.

Thomas
says he wants his work
to reach an audience
of young people and
make them question whether
war is the right solution
to anything. He is certain
it is not.